Will Durant – “The Story of Philosophy – Plato” | www.gnosticmedia.com | October 3, 2012

“This is the audio version of Chapter 01 from Will Durant’s Story of Philosophy – Plato. Understanding Plato is essential to understanding current social programs, eugenics, vegetarianism, and how they operate and how they’re geared toward an elitist utopia.”

It’s very interesting, but Durant at one point seems to take seriously the idea that only the Guardians would be restricted with family life, and other classes would be free to live as they choose. I don’t think the full picture adds up to that at all, especially when it is carried out in real life. There is a huge disconnect between what we read as Plato’s intentions and the horror that would result from those ideas being implemented. What kind of people really do rule? Isn’t it the more ruthless who end up ruling most of the time?

The point that bothers me is that if this model has been followed and pursued in real life – Will Durant gives the example of the Church in the Middle Ages – then, combining what we know that Jacques Attali has said in A Brief History of the Future, and what Carrol Quigley has said, and Antony Sutton, then the class that is really in charge must be the ones who control the monetary system, who pay the “guardians”, the “philosophers”, priests, academics, think-tanks, scientists, aristocrats, politicians, bureaucrats, media, scientists, corporations, industry, weapons manufacturers – using high-tech computing power too – to rule over everyone else.

These must be higher than what conventional historians portray as “middle class”. They imply that a real middle class were the ones who rose up against the aristocracy and Church on their own steam. And I guess I would tend to doubt that version of events. I think that idea of historical “progress” is what we are meant to believe so that we accept the direction in which we are being pulled.

I enjoyed listening to this audio podcast version of Plato’s Republic, which you can find on iTunes.

It’s clear that Plato was talking about infanticide, eugenics, and a class structure which parallels Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

Also the Republic talks about control over culture and the importance and effect of culture in shaping society (music, plays, poetry). He talks about it in terms of what he would like to ban.